How Ontrack Moving® relocated Plasmidsaurus, a DNA-sequencing biotech, up to the 15th floor of 2 Tower Place, with the lab moved bench by bench in the team's own labeling order and the PromethION sequencers carried by the lead foreman by hand.
By Pablo Giordano, Owner, Ontrack Moving® • June 2026 • 8 min read
Plasmidsaurus, a DNA-sequencing biotech, was relocating its lab and office inside its own building at 2 Tower Place in South San Francisco, moving up to the 15th floor. The address barely changed. The job was carrying a working sequencing lab, irreplaceable instruments included, into a higher floor of an active biotech tower and rebuilding it in the same order it left.
In short: in 2026, Ontrack Moving® relocated Plasmidsaurus, a biotech company that provides whole-plasmid and DNA sequencing, inside its building at 2 Tower Place in South San Francisco, moving the lab and office up to the 15th floor over two business days with a crew of eight and roughly 190 dolly loads. The lab's most sensitive instruments, two Oxford Nanopore PromethION sequencers, were handled by the fewest hands on the job: carried only on request, and only by the lead foreman by hand. Sixteen Opentrons liquid-handling robots and fifteen lab refrigerators were moved in the order the team labeled them, so the lab could be rebuilt bench by bench upstairs.
Before the crew started, the building's property manager, Transwestern, acting for the GNS Tower ownership, required a certificate of insurance with primary and non-contributory general liability, which Ontrack Moving® filed ahead of move day. For projects like it, see our laboratory movers and Bay Area commercial movers.
South San Francisco bills itself as the Birthplace of Biotechnology, and the Oyster Point cluster off Highway 101 is dense with the kind of tenant Plasmidsaurus is: a company whose lab is the product. Plasmidsaurus sequences plasmids and DNA, work that runs on precision instruments and cold storage, so relocating it is not a matter of boxing up desks. The twist on this job was that the move stayed inside one address. Both the pickup and the destination were 2 Tower Place; the lab and office were moving up to the 15th floor of the same active tower.
A floor-to-floor move sounds simpler than a cross-town one, and in some ways it is, because there is no highway run and no second building to coordinate. But it brings its own constraints. Everything rides a shared freight elevator on a schedule. The work happens in an occupied biotech tower with other tenants and building rules. And the equipment, the sensitive part, still has to come off its benches, travel, and go back onto new benches in working order. The plan had to treat a short vertical move with the same care a long one would get.
The most important items on the job were two Oxford Nanopore PromethION sequencers, among the highest-value and most sensitive benchtop devices in the lab. These were handled under a strict, narrow rule agreed with the client: Ontrack Moving® did not move them unless asked to, and if asked, they were carried by the lead foreman by hand rather than passed along a chain of crew members. Keeping the irreplaceable instruments on one experienced person is a deliberate way to keep the handling risk low on equipment a lab cannot simply reorder.
Around the sequencers came the rest of a real working lab: sixteen Opentrons liquid-handling robots, fifteen laboratory refrigerators, lab work benches, rolling machine carts, and speed-packs of loose inventory. The Opentrons units and the refrigerators were padded, kept upright, and moved in sequence. Across both lab areas, the rule was the same: items were kept together by area and moved in the order the Plasmidsaurus team had labeled, so nothing arrived on the 15th floor orphaned from the bench it belonged to.
On most commercial moves, more hands mean a faster job. On a lab move, the most sensitive instruments are the exception: the fewer hands that touch a high-value sequencer, the lower the handling risk. That is why the PromethION units on this job were carried only on request and only by the lead foreman by hand. A crew that understands lab work knows which items get the speed of a team and which get the care of one person.
The reason a labeling plan matters so much on a lab move is that a lab is not a pile of furniture; it is an arrangement. A bench holds instruments, reagents, and tools in a working layout, and the value of the move is getting that layout back, not just getting the boxes upstairs. On the Plasmidsaurus relocation, lab benches and their equipment were kept together by area and routed to the correct location on the 15th floor based on the team's labeling, so the lab could be reassembled in the same arrangement it left rather than staged in one undifferentiated pile and sorted out later.
The same discipline carried the office. Desks, task and executive chairs, bookcases, PCs and monitors, a conference table, and three ROOM phone booths all went up to the new floor. The ROOM booths, the soundproof office phone booths built as enclosures rather than furniture, were disassembled, relocated, and reassembled on the 15th floor. Wall-mounted televisions and whiteboards were unmounted for the move; remounting them was outside the agreed scope, which is the kind of line a clear proposal draws up front so there is no confusion about what the crew is and is not doing on the wall.
A move like this is decided before a single dolly rolls. The freight elevator, the labeling, the order of the lab areas, the narrow rule on the sequencers, and the building paperwork are all things you plan, not things you improvise on the floor. When they are worked out in advance, two business days and a crew of eight can take a sequencing lab up fifteen floors and stand it back up in order. When they are not, the same job stalls in the elevator lobby.
"In a commercial move, planning and preparation is half the battle."
Pablo Giordano, Owner, Ontrack Moving®
| Project | Internal biotech lab and office relocation, floor to floor |
| Client | Plasmidsaurus (DNA-sequencing biotech) |
| Location | 2 Tower Place, South San Francisco (relocated up to the 15th floor) |
| Structure | Two business days, crew of eight, two bobtail trucks, ~190 dolly loads |
| Headline equipment | 2 Oxford Nanopore PromethION sequencers, 16 Opentrons robots, 15 lab refrigerators |
| Building management | Transwestern, for the GNS Tower ownership |
| COI requirement | Primary and non-contributory general liability, filed before move day |
| Carrier | Ontrack Moving®, asset-based, USDOT #2551548 |
An active biotech tower does not let a moving crew in on a handshake. At 2 Tower Place, the property manager is Transwestern Property Company West, operating for the building ownership, GNS North Tower and GNS South Tower. Before the move was scheduled, building management reviewed Ontrack Moving®'s certificate of insurance and asked for two specific things: that the certificate name the building parties as the certificate holder, and that it confirm the general liability coverage was primary and non-contributory. Ontrack Moving® provided the certificate to that specification ahead of move day.
That paperwork is routine for a mover that works Class A and biotech buildings, and it is exactly the kind of requirement that surprises a cheaper outfit that has never filed one. Getting it right in advance is part of why the move started on schedule instead of stalling at the loading dock while a property manager waited on a corrected certificate. It is the same building-compliance discipline behind our recent San Francisco high-rise office move for Aravo Solutions, where the certificates for both Class A buildings were filed before the crew arrived.
Plasmidsaurus did not hire Ontrack Moving® because it was the cheapest quote. It hired an asset-based carrier because the company that walked the lab is the same company that showed up to move it. There was no broker in the middle handing the work to whichever crew was free, and no question about who was accountable for two irreplaceable sequencers crossing a freight elevator. For a lab whose equipment is its business, that single, unbroken line of accountability is worth more than shaving a few dollars off an estimate. It is the same reason this kind of work belongs with a direct carrier rather than a subcontracted team booked through a broker.
Biotech buildings and their property managers review a mover's credentials before a crew is allowed in. Ontrack Moving® carried its $10,000,000 Combined Protection Tower for building and property liability across the project, which is what satisfies a certificate-of-insurance requirement and covers the premises, floors, elevators, and loading areas the crew works in and around. The equipment itself is covered separately under standard $0.60 per pound per article cargo liability under federal FMCSA rules, with additional valuation protection available for purchase, which a lab moving high-value sequencers and robots should weigh deliberately.
| Coverage | What it applies to |
|---|---|
| $10M Combined Protection Tower | Buildings, premises, floors, elevators, docks, and shared loading areas at 2 Tower Place; general liability and workers compensation for the work performed. This is what a building names on the COI, filed here as primary and non-contributory. |
| $0.60/lb cargo liability | The lab equipment and instruments themselves, per article, under the federal FMCSA minimum. Additional valuation protection available for purchase, and worth weighing on high-value sequencers and robots. |
| 0% Out-of-Service Rate | The federal safety record under FMCSA inspection, verifiable under USDOT #2551548. |
Plasmidsaurus' lab and office were relocated up to the 15th floor of 2 Tower Place over two business days, the sequencers carried by hand, the Opentrons robots and refrigerators moved in order, and the benches rebuilt in the arrangement they left. The building paperwork was filed before the crew arrived, so the job ran on its schedule rather than waiting on a corrected certificate. It is the kind of move that looks routine from the outside and is anything but, because the value of the work is in the planning that keeps a sequencing lab intact while it changes floors.
It is also a clear picture of what a biotech lab is buying when it hires an asset-based carrier: not a truck, but a crew that knows a PromethION from a printer, knows which items get the speed of a team and which get the care of one person, and knows how to clear a building's insurance requirements before move day instead of on it. If your organization is planning a laboratory move, a floor-to-floor relocation inside an active building, or an equipment move into a regulated biotech space, our laboratory moving and San Francisco commercial movers team can scope it with an on-site walkthrough.
Laboratory relocations, biotech and floor-to-floor moves, and high-value instruments across South San Francisco and the Bay Area, run by our own in-house crews. Asset-based direct carrier under USDOT #2551548. $10M Combined Protection Tower for building and property liability.
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